This invention relates to a safety guard for incorporating in or attachment to a gate that is used to close the opening in the guard rail of a walkway and the like.
In many industrial plants, walkways or catwalks provide access for workers to traverse from one area of the plant to another, for example to provide access to various equipment throughout the plant. Unfortunately, the walkways also provide locations from which a worker could fall to a lower level. In order to make them safer, such walkways are usually provided with guard rails to help prevent a worker from accidentally stepping off the side of the walkway and falling. For various reasons, however, it is necessary to provide openings in the guard rails. Usually, for example, one or more ladders or stairs lead from the walkway to a lower level. Openings are provided in the guard rails so that a person can move from the ladders or stairs onto the walkway and vice versa. Such openings in the guard rails are a danger to personnel using the walkway.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,094,863, Hardy L. LaCook, Jr. taught an attachment for a safety gate that was positioned to close the opening in a catwalk to allow access to and from a ladder or stairs. The gate was urged to the closed position by biasing means, such as springs. An attachment was provided for connecting to the lower side of existing gates to prevent workmen using the catwalk from slipping under the gate and falling into the opening for stairs or a ladder.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,866,356, LaCook et al. taught an earlier version of a safety gate for closing the openings for ladders or stairwells in the guard rails of walkways. A spring urged the gate member to rotate in one direction and a stop limited the rotation in that direction to position the gate member to close the opening. The stop was adjustable so that the gate member could be positioned as required by location of the opening relative to the guard rail.
The safety gates shown and described in the ""356 and ""863 patents have proved to be very successful in the marketplace. However, the stop previously described is typically constructed of an adjustable bolt, with attachment hardware, so that the position of the gate member in its quiescent position can be adjusted relative to the guard rail. The respective ends of the adjustable bolt are exposed to the exterior of the gate, and thus can snag the clothing of workers as they pass through the gate. Further, the closure of the stop means of the gate can pinch fingers and the like when the gate closes, thereby presenting another safety hazard. Thus, there remains a need for a way to eliminate this tendency of the prior art gate to snag the clothing of workers, or other loose items as they pass through such a gate.
The present invention addresses this need in the art by providing a guard plate mounted with the hardware that also mounts the stop to the gate. The guard plate is preferably formed of plate metal to define a plate mounting area and a pair of guard plates that extend perpendicularly from either side of the plate mounting area. In that way, each of the pair of guard plates extends in a direction parallel to the gate a distance sufficient to shield the mounting hardware behind the guard plate.
The guard plate serves the further function of providing a display area which may be used to include warnings and the like for workers. The display area may be painted with a highly visible paint and further include contrasting colors for warnings to enhance the safety of the safety gate.
These and other objects, advantages, and features of this invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art from a consideration of this specification, including the attached drawings and appended claims.